Christian Ames
Fans of the Harry Potter series have uttered the phrase "Where the crap is Dumbledore during all of this?" more than once. He's usually away on business when Harry and his friends are in imminent danger of attack, and the three of them are usually left to either figure out difficult riddles or single-handedly fight humongous snakes, a giant troll, an army of gigantic spiders--pretty much every horror imaginable. And when he says he's away on business, you know he's probably just hanging out in his apartment in his wizard underpants watching the wizarding equivalent of Frasier reruns.
The case against him:
If you're into nude men who like to ride around on giant cats then your entertainment options were pretty much limited to He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. As a fan you know that Skeletor was possibly the baddest guy on this or any other planet.
He was blue, wore nothing but some legwarmers, a mini-skirt and a pair of suspenders, and had an entire mysterious magical arsenal at his command. He could fire lasers out of his eyes, teleport and shoot lightning out of his hands. But most convenient of all, was that he possessed the power of 'remote viewing' which enabled him to sit around in Snake Mountain and cackle at a vision of He-Man and his fellow semi-nude male friends, remarking to henchman Beast Man how He-Man was 'about to fall into' a devious trap he'd set (devious in this case meaning "easily escapable").
Unfortunately, most of the time He-Man escapes from Skeletor's snares by either tricking him or overpowering him. Often the two would wind up dueling with their Power Swords, and He-Man would usually win by cutting a rope that would cause a chandelier to land on Skeletor, binding his arms as he hopped up and down, cursing He-Man and vowing revenge.
Why Skeletor during these encounters would not rely on his eyeball lasers or finger lightning is not known. Skeletor also demonstrated, on several occasions, an ability to teleport himself as well as other people across great distances.
The fact that He-Man does not find himself whisked away to Bismarck, North Dakota every time he engages Skeletor is a question for the ages, or at the very least the screenwriters.
As far as evil wizards go, Profion is about as evil as they come. You can tell he's evil because he laughs at his own jokes a lot and hams up every scene he's in. Since he was portrayed by Academy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons, you'd think there would be some semblance of craft going on, and you would be wrong.
As legend has it, Merlin is one of the greatest and most powerful wizards who has ever lived. Part human, part demon, he is a being of supreme skill and wisdom. Various writings have shown Merlin to have the power of prophecy, telepathy, necromancy, the ability to conjure realistic and terrifying illusions, and even an Obi Wan Kenobi-like "force ghost" power to revisit the living after death.
If successful wizarding were baseball, Gargamel would be the White Sox. His only goal in life is to capture the Smurfs and since all Smurfs are roughly the size of squirrels and subsist almost entirely on a diet of Smurfberries, one would conclude that a basic knowledge of mousetraps would do the trick.
You might think it's a little unfair to pick on a wizard who dies right at the beginning of his film, and we'd have to agree with you in most cases except this one. When Ulrich dies, no one remains to defeat the evil dragon, Valerian, except Ulrich's doofy apprentice, Galen Bradwarden. The entire movie passes by before you find out Ulrich died on purpose so Galen could bring him back to life at the end, thus saving Ulrich from an entire movie's worth of walking around.
In the books, Gandalf is a being of extraordinary magical prowess. Immortality, for starters. He also happens to be able to disappear at will, is apparently impervious to injury, can conjure and control fire, has limitless knowledge of spells, potions, and sorcery, and is all but unequaled in the wizard world.
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